


Designs on You

by energyintotomatoes



Category: New Girl (TV 2011)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cunnilingus, Erotica, Exes No Longer, Exes Reunite, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Inner Dialogue, It’s Getting Hot in Apartment 4D, Knitting, Love, Lust, One Shot, Pining, Romance, Romantic Angst, Sex, Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/energyintotomatoes/pseuds/energyintotomatoes
Summary: She could have sworn that earlier this week, Nick looked at her with a hint of That Night’s same dark fire in his eyes. She had asked him to help her with a stubborn bracelet clasp; after he sprung the mechanism, his fingers curled briefly and unnecessarily around her wrist.“There ya go, Jess,” he said quietly, swallowing once, his eyes on hers, before he let go and left the room.(She’d be lying if she said she’d forgotten that asking him for help with things turned him on.)Set in 4x22, “Clean Break," a year after Jess & Nick’s breakup and an hour after theirso-much-left-unsaid Sex Mug conversationin his room. Canon divergence ahead.Originally called “Pantyhose” because of a pivotal admission by Nick about what a certain fashion choice by Jess does to him; quickly retitled in reference to an Old 97s song thatcaptures longing and lust perfectly.
Relationships: Jessica Day & Nick Miller, Jessica Day/Nick Miller
Comments: 14
Kudos: 57





	Designs on You

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [At the Edges](https://archiveofourown.org/works/697065) by [blithers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithers/pseuds/blithers). 



Jessica Day’s needles clack in a furious rhythm: _Screw him. Screw him. Screw him.  
  
_She’s sitting on her bed, knitting a skein of nubbly blue and red yarn into a nubbly blue and red scarf at what she thinks must be a record pace. ( _I am,_ she tells herself with forced gaiety _, the fastest knitter in the West!)_

This — gettin’ her yarn on — has long been how she’s handled frustration. (She has been known to proudly proclaim, sometimes to virtual strangers, that she practically came out of the womb with a pair of knitting needles in hand.)

But this time, her go-to get-through-it tactic is not really working.

Because no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop thinking about Nick freaking Miller ( _Mr. Clean Break! Mr. Nope-I-Don’t-Think-About-Ya-That-Way-At-All-Anymore!_ ) and how freaking _mad_ she is at his stupid freaking face.

On her nightstand, there’s a half-full glass of pink fizzy wine, the kind that tastes extra-sweet when she’s sad. It does other things to her, too, so maybe it’s not the best choice Jessica Day has made today or ever, but screw it, she thinks, and _screw him_.

She thinks that last part with extra fervor, her mouth set in a tight line — aaaaand she realizes she’s dropped a stitch.

“Damn it,” she mutters, throwing the needles and the attempted scarf down on the bed and reaching for her glass. _Bottoms up, sailor!,_ she thinks as she downs the rest of the wine in one swift go. Her eyes fall on the Chicago Bears helmet that still sits on her windowsill, holding her loose change.

And then, Jessica Day admits some things to herself.

Thing 1: She misses being Nick Miller’s girl. She misses it _bad_. It’s not that they haven’t been friendly in the year since they broke up — they’ve been The Most Amicable and Supportive of Exes! Jess was _determined_ for them to win that only-in-her-head competition! But it turns out it’s a hollow win, this keeping-each-other-at-a-polite-distance way of coexisting, this play-acting at being _totally cool!_ when really _,_ she is Yearning-with-a-capital-Y for the chance to try that whole relationship thing with him again. When really, she would bet her lifetime crafting budget on this wager: _We have each grown older and wiser and a little bit better, and this time, we will get this right._ When really, she is burning up, and secretly hoping that he is, too.

 _Thing 2:_ Yes. She is burning up. Burning _the fuck_ up, to be exact. She wants him. She is a one-woman Christmas Carol being visited by the Ghosts of Fuckings Past: In her closet, Nick pushing into her roughly, her wrists tied behind her back with a green ribbon that seconds before was in her hair. On top of the bar at the Griffin, her legs spread at his command, her skirt hiked up around her waist as he worked her with a glass Coke bottle (to this day, she cannot see one of those without blushing hard and red). His hand clamped over her mouth _— “Do. Not. Make. A. Sound.” —_ as he took her against the cool marble wall of that fancy restaurant bathroom. And afterwards, the smiles, the shared secrets; the way he looked at her with a mixture of pride and awe and amazement, like she was the most dizzyingly delicious woman in the world and he simply couldn’t _believe_ he got to do this to her and with her.

(She had a safeword and everything. Just because she rocks a lot of polka dots and her checks have baby farm animals on them doesn’t mean she’s not into getting fucked so hard she sees stars. She is _very much_ into that, something she learned with Nick, starting with how her body went _fucking electric with want_ when he grabbed her and kissed her for the first time. She feels horrible for Sam for even _thinking_ it, but if Nick hadn’t walked away from her and shut his door, there is a non-zero chance she would have let him fuck her right there in the hallwa _y_ as Sam slept in her bed.)

She could have sworn that earlier this week, Nick looked at her with a hint of That Night’s same dark fire in his eyes.She had asked him to help her with a stubborn bracelet clasp; after he sprung the mechanism, his fingers curled briefly and unnecessarily around her wrist.

“There ya go, Jess,” he said quietly, swallowing once, his eyes on hers, before he let go and left the room.

(She’d be lying if she said she’d forgotten that asking him for help with things turned him on.)

But apparently and crushingly, That Moment was in fact all in her head. As of approximately one hour ago, he’s made it clear that of the two of them, she’s the only one interested in continuing the Adventures of Sex Nick and Sex Jess.

She put it out there. He was unaffected. She is furious and mortified, more than a little bit heartbroken. And now she’s alone in her room, slightly tipsy and failing even at her Great Love: knitting.

She’s trying to keep herself firmly on the anger side of the equation, rather than the sadness one, and to keep her lust in check now that he’s made it clear it’s not reciprocated. _Jessica_ , she tells herself, _this is the same guy who will insist to the grave that the phrase is brass act, not class act — “because obviously, Day, when someone does something awesome, what do they give ‘em? A brass statue.”_

But this, too, fails: It just makes her laugh. Which makes her wish she was laughing with _him._ Which makes her think about his _mouth_. And _that_ — oh, dear Lord — brings her to the inevitable thought:

_I want to know what that nearly-a-beard stubble Nick’s sporting would feel like between my legs._

Jess can’t help it: She groans, quietly, just a little, and puts her empty glass down on her nightstand.

If Nick-on-Jess time is off the table, then some Jess-on-Jess action will have to do.

She is already wet beneath her sheer black tights and light purple cotton panties as she lies down and gets ready to pretend her fingers are his.

That’s precisely when there’s a knock at her door — _ohshitohshitohshit —_ and she hears Nick calling her name.  
  
Her resulting scramble over the next four to six seconds is, by any objective standard, highly comical: Sitting bolt upright so quickly she almost knocks herself over! Grabbing for her discarded knitting project with one hand while yanking the skirt of her black dress back down and smoothing it over her thighs with the other! And finally, affecting an air of total and complete nonchalance, as if she had _not_ just been about to rock her own suburbs while thinking about the very ex who is now knocking at her door!

“Come in,” she sighs, perched on the edge of her bed, trying to sound calm and bored and disaffected. Needles back in hand, her fingers are shaking a little, but — _good little soldiers_! — they’re blindly resuming their scarf-ery ( _thank God it comes as second nature_ ).

“Hey, Jess,” he says.

He is holding their Sex Mug, passing it from hand to hand awkwardly.

“Hey,” she responds, proud of herself for sounding so blasé. She stares at what she’s knitting, trying to convey the impression that it, more than anything or anyone else in her room, is What Is Very, Very Important To Her.

“ _Jess_ ,” he says again, more intense this time, almost like a plea. She hesitates, then sighs, as if put-upon, and brings her eyes up to meet his.

“Do you really think I haven't thought about putting this mug out?” he asks, and he sounds almost desperate.

In a giddy rush, hope begins to spring eternal. Wonder of delicious wonders: It was _not_ all in her head. Half of her wants to yell at his stupid, stupid face for letting her think — even for an hour — that it might have been. The other half wants to break out in the biggest, goofiest smile of all time and then jump his fucking bones.

She lands somewhere in the middle, boomerang-ing his earlier words back at him: “Oh, I don't know, Nick. You said it. What's past is past. Clean break.”

“ _Jessica,”_ he says. “Think about my living conditions for the past year. I live across the hall from my beautiful ex-girlfriend. And your living conditions... you live across the hall from your beautiful ex-boyfriend. Two true beauties!”

(She bites the inside of her mouth to keep from grinning. She is not going to let him have it that easily.)

“So you _have_ thought about it,” she says, measured, scholarly, as if she’s commenting on a scientific experiment from a great emotional distance.

“I'm a man. I am a human man.”

“Interesting,” she says. She crosses her legs and sits up a little straighter as he continues.

“You're the one who's always getting out of that shower in that little towel, Jess. Or you're wearing your glitter or your pantyhose. They're driving me crazy, okay? I know how hard it is to get those pantyhose up, and I just... I just sometimes want to rip 'em down.”

Oh, dear God. She is instantly, _instantly_ dripping wet. And she can’t pretend anymore: she’s ready for him to know, for them to be _them_ again, tangled up in each other all fierce and hungry.

So Jessica Day leans into both her longing and her power and does something that is entirely brazen, but somehow also entirely natural. Staring straight into Nick’s widening eyes, she drops her knitting on the ground, bites her lower lip, and slowly parts her legs in clear invitation. (She is wearing the aforementioned pantyhose and panties beneath them, so it’s not a full-on Sharon Stone situation, but still: _The Jessica Day School of Straight-Up Vixenology is in session_.)

“Well,” she says, “what’s stopping you?”

Her voice is husky like she is some 1940s movie starlet, but she isn’t; she is exactly, perfectly herself. And he is staring at her with surprise and lust and awe, this brave and gorgeous woman showing him in no uncertain terms that she is his for the taking — that it wasn’t just some fleeting urge that made her put out their Sex Mug, but a sustained, specific arc of very real desire. For that, _for her_ , he is willing to risk getting hurt again a thousand times over.

Without breaking eye contact, he uses one foot to close her door.  
  
“We doing this, Jessica Day?”

They both know that if they are, it will Mean Something — that the ‘this’ in question is far more than just one hot and frantic fuck. And as it turns out, they are both very much OK with that.

So she says _yes_.

His eyes still locked on hers, he sets the mug down on her dresser, Ass Out. 

And then, at last, it is game-the-fuck- _on_.

Covering the space between them in two strides, he is _on_ her — taking her face in his big and rough hands ( _oh, oh, she has missed those hands!_ ), shoving one knee between her thighs, and kissing her with such force that she thinks her heart might just explode. His mouth on her mouth is just like she remembered, except _better_ , somehow both nostalgic and new. He is kissing her like kissing her is the most urgent thing he, or anyone anywhere, has ever done — like she is water and he is dying of thirst; like she is the person he loves the most in the world and if he stops kissing her she might disappear.

But she doesn’t — she is kissing him back, messy and desperate and overjoyed, throwing her hands around his neck and pushing her hips forward and _wriggling_ her pantyhosed pussy against his thigh. He groans into her mouth, and then he’s rocking her down onto the bed — she can feel his cock, already hard and thick beneath his jeans, pressing against her hip — and he’s running his thumbs over the hollow of her neck, and she is _writhing_ underneath him, out of her fucking mind with want.

Then he shifts and pushes himself up and back; he is now kneeling halfway between her hips and her knees, straddling her and pinning her legs in place with his weight, his cock straining against his jeans as she looks up at him, dazed and panting. She reaches for it, for _him,_ to try to unbuckle his belt and get her hands on what’s underneath, but he grabs her wrists and leans forward and pins them down at her sides — _cue an immediate, involuntary moan_ — and he says, “Not yet.”

He releases her hands, but before he does, he tells her — in that Sex Nick voice that’s half whiskey and half gravel and has a direct line to her clit — “Jess, _do not move_ until I tell you to.”

What can she do but obey?

He rocks back, one knee still on each side of her. The skirt of her dress is already bunched up around her waist. She feels his warm hands running over her abdomen, and then he’s hooking them over the band of her pantyhose and yanking them down.

Wait. No, he is not. He is — _oh_ _dear Lord_ — _ripping the nylon apart on her body,_ tearing the sheer black fabric like it is _nothing_ , the sound of the synthetic fibers ripping apart hanging in the air like a perfume.

“I told you, Jess,” he breathes.

And then he’s pulling the soaked crotch of her panties to the side and running his thumb up and down her wet slit and then — _oh, oh_ — his thumb is _in her,_ and then two of his fingers, and she loses the ability to form coherent thoughts.

In a haze, she hears his next command: “Unbutton your dress, right now, and take it off over your head.” That’s going to be hard with her lower body immobilized and his fingers fucking _dancing_ inside her pussy — he _knows_ it will be exquisite torture — and she leans into the helpless messiness of it under his gaze, tearing the buttons open and arching her back as she inelegantly shimmies the black cotton fabric up over her arms and her head.

(For each of them, in different but perfectly complementary ways, the feeling of her squirming beneath him as she tries, breathless, to do his bidding can only be described as Highly Fucking Erotic. And he isn’t yet done.)

“Now you’re gonna take your bra off for me, Jess,” he says, sounding _stupidly, ridiculously_ hot to her ears as he works her, alternating two fingers plumbing the depths of her cunt with his thumb rubbing roughly against her clit.

She springs open the clasp on her satiny pink bra ( _thank the good Lord it’s in the front)_ and her tits are _heaving,_ finally fully exposed. He licks his lips and leans forward, in a way that increases the pressure of her fingers in her pussy and allows him, with his other hand, to brush his rough knuckles slowly across the tops of her breasts and then across her nipples.

Somehow, even though she is in a delirious Sex Fog, she can’t miss this golden opportunity to gasp out, “You’ve always been a real upper boob guy.”

He laughs, the lines around his eyes crinkling, planting his hand on the bed next to her elbow to support himself as he leans in to kiss her once in a break from the intensity, quick and a little sweet.

Then he _bites her lower lip_ and holds it between his teeth for a second as he draws his face away slowly, making her gasp. Leaning back again, still working her with one hand, he shifts his position so that he’s kneeling between her legs, using his other hand to push them farther open as he yanks down and off what remains of her pantyhose.

And that is when Jessica Day gets her wish.

In one fluid motion, his mouth is where his fingers were, and he’s hiking her legs up over his shoulders, and the feeling of his stubble against her slick pussy is everything she imagined. She props herself up on her elbows for a second — she wants to _see_ — and it is gorgeous and obscene, his face buried in her as he goes the fuck to town. She wonders for a second if she is maybe dreaming, but no; this is _very very very_ real. And then he does that thing with his tongue that _drives her fucking wild_ , kind of curling it up into her as he shakes his head back and forth a little, gripping her thighs so tight as she bucks against him that she thinks—no, _hopes_ —his fingers will leave bruises that mark her as his. Her elbows give out. She collapses back onto the bed, her head bouncing a little on the mattress, and she comes while saying his name and the F-word over and over again — _NickNickOhFuckNickNickNickOhFuckNickOhFuck_ — in a voice she barely even recognizes as her own.

(There’s a thin sheen of sweat all over her body; he could swear she looks like she’s _shimmering_. He asks himself: _How did I ever get so lucky_?)

As he lifts his mouth and she comes back to herself, she hears the jingle of his belt, and she realizes that he did all of this to her — turned her into a mostly-naked, panting, blissed-out _mess_ beneath him — without taking off his own clothes.

She hasn’t even touched his dick once.

But oh, _oh_. As the wave of her orgasm subsides and she she props herself on her elbows, she can _see_ it. His breathing heavy, the bottom half of his face glazed with her arousal, Nick has wrestled off his flannel shirt at lightning-speed, pulled his wallet out of his jeans and ripped open a condom packet with his teeth (something else, in a plastic bag, fell out of his pocket, too, but neither of them really noticed it). In a quick hop, he went from kneeling between her thighs to standing on the floor at the edge of her bed, pulling off his jeans and boxers in one go.

And _hello, old friend_!

He is _hard —_ like, _rock_ - _hard —_ and her big eyes get even bigger (she forgot he was quite this _thick!_ ), and before he can roll the condom on, she’s sitting up and scooting to the edge of the bed and spitting on her hands and reaching for his length.

But again, he intercepts her — “Wait,” he tells her. “Not yet.”

(He knows that once he’s inside her, he’s not going to last long. He almost came himself while watching and listening to _her_ come; he still cannot believe this is really, actually happening.)

Her pout makes his cock even harder, and he sucks in his breath through his teeth.  
  
“ _Jessica_ ,” he says slowly. “Look at what you do to me.”

And with that, he’s rolling the condom on, and he is shoving his hands under her thighs and she is throwing her arms over his shoulders and _oh God_ he is _hoisting her up off the bed,_ like she weighs nothing, and she’s wrapping her legs around him, his cock against her belly, and he’s groaning and walking them to the stretch of brick wall between her nightstand and her door.

He is pressing her against the cool red brick, the scratch and bite of it wildly erotic on the flesh of her back. They are quiet for just a second, foreheads touching. And then he’s guiding his length into her with one hand and supporting her ass with the other and oh dear God their bodies were _made_ for this and why did they ever, ever stop?

It is damn near _perfect_ : The slightly-sour taste of her own arousal on his tongue as they kiss, deep and hard. His cock filling her up from this angle, hitting her at just the right spot ( _he remembers_ ). Her weight bearing down on him as he thrusts, her gorgeous pussy clenching around him wet and tight. And when they come, in sequence — her first, once again calling his name — it is both a culmination and a new beginning.

Afterwards, he carries her back over to the bed, still inside her, both of them damp and giddy. He’s tender and gentle now, smiling in an unguarded way that makes her heart grow two sizes (and she was no Grinch to begin with). When he pulls out of her, she sighs a little, already missing the feel of him; he plants a soft kiss on her shoulder, then knots the condom and launches it, in a perfect arc, into the trashcan by her closet.  
  
_“Yes!”_ he laughs, doing an exaggerated fist pump. “Did you see that, Jess?”  
  
“Dude,” she responds, saucy and wiggling her eyebrows, “that’s not even the most impressive thing you’ve done in the past five minutes alone.”

They’re laughing together again, the emotional distance of the past year dissolved in a way that feels almost as good and as intimate as fucking each other.

( _Almost_.)

“Hey, Miller,” she says, her voice teasing.

“Yeah, Day?” he responds, propping himself up on one elbow as he runs his hand up and down the curve of her body.

“You owe me a new pair of pantyhose,” she says, holding up a shred of black nylon she’s found on her comforter.

He can’t help it: he’s kissing her again now, and she is so very, very into it, her mouth open and warm and responsive, and in a minute they’re totally starting to get heated for a second time.

But as they start to really move around on her bed, there’s a weird crinkling sound; she’s rolled over on something and it’s stuck beneath her thigh. “Hold on a sec, cowboy,” she says, arching her back and reaching underneath her leg.

She pulls out a very weathered-looking plastic bag that’s holding a single coin. It must have accidentally fallen out of his pocket when he was getting the condom.

His face, when she looks at him quizzically, is suddenly terrified. __  
  
_Ohhhhhhhh. Oh. Oh._

“Nick... is this...?”

It is. They both know it.

So she doesn’t finish her sentence, except to break into a smile that says _this is a good thing, not a thing that’s gonna scare me off, you sexy, sexy clown_ , and he doesn’t answer, except to take her chin in his hand roughly and gratefully and kiss her again, and again, and again.

_-end-_

**Author's Note:**

> This story's title and the “She’d by lying if she said...” lines are references to the captures-yearning-perfectly Old 97s song [“Designs on You.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFsCCh0RePk) (This fic was originally titled “Pantyhose,” but I changed it to the far better and more emotionally resonant “Designs on You” after publishing. Sorry for the indecisiveness.)
> 
> I was inspired to write this after a quarantine re-watch of “New Girl.” Loved the show when it first aired, but somehow, I missed the true wild-as-fuckness of Nick and Jess’s chemistry until now. Then came going down the rabbit hole. (Me: There’s gotta be some good fanfic about these two, right? The Internet: Hell, yes.) There’s so much great stuff out there, but reading the gorgeous Nick/Jess stories by @blithers and @kyra (as well as the latter’s New Girl meta — especially [this)](https://kyrafic.tumblr.com/post/60585827124/teampepperwood-kyrafic-blithers-nick) is what inspired me to try my hand at writing my own take on them for the first time. In particular, the way @blithers’ wrote Jess’s voice in “At the Edges” influenced and inspired her voice here.
> 
> Thanks for the chance to share this story. Comments are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
